Episode 40: Minister to Developer. Landing a job in a tough economy, with Coleman Escue
How Coleman Escue pierced a veil of early rejection and setbacks, landing a dream role as a professional developer.
Coleman Escue was a minister before Covid saw his congregation dissolve.
This sent him down a path of discovery, where he worked at Chipotle, as a chiropractic assistant and as an electrician. He soon discovered freeCodeCamp, and began pursuing programing as a career.
In Episode 40 of the Exponential Growth show, Coleman talks about:
Stacking skills.
Learning to code.
Dealing with rejection.
Why he turned to the Per Scholas bootcamp.
How networking eventually led to a warm job lead, and his first dev job.
Episode 40 Transcript
If you prefer reading, or want to search through the conversation, here’s the transcript.
[00:00:18] James Hudnall: Hey everyone. Today I'm joined by Coleman Escue, a software engineer at CGI, one of the largest IT and business consulting firms in the world. Coleman, welcome to Exponential Growth.
[00:00:42] Coleman Escue: Thank you. Happy to be here.
[00:00:44] James Hudnall: Man, I am so excited to talk to you. And for those of you that don't know, Coleman was one of the first people on LinkedIn that actually reached out to me I think it's so cool, Coleman, because I've seen you go full circle. I think back to our first conversation and the ones that we've had most recently. And I'm just so excited to dive into your story today, but as a starter, why don't you briefly tell us who you are and what you do.
[00:01:05] Coleman Escue: Yeah. So, I'm Coleman, I'm originally from Alabama, now currently live in Columbus, Ohio. And I come from a church ministry background ended up after a bit transitioning into software engineering and bootcamp grad and now a software engineer at CGI, like you said.
[00:01:24] James Hudnall: And you landed a job in the current job market, which is no small feat.
[00:01:29] Coleman Escue: Yes, it was not an easy task to take on, but I'm very grateful for the opportunity. It was a lot of learning and a lot of grinding in a good way. And so, yeah, it was really fun.
[00:01:41] James Hudnall: I'm excited to dig into that, but before we do that, let's go back to your childhood, growing up. What did you do for fun? What did you think maybe you wanted to do when you grew up?
[00:01:48] Coleman Escue: So when I was young I guess this also kind of attributes to being from Alabama. I was like diehard sports, diehard football, I remember in like third grade we had this project called the me quilt where we made like an actual quilt, but we had four or five different essays we had to write, which were just like one page, like a couple paragraphs.
And one of mine was an essay on, like, what do I want to be when I grew up? And I remember I wrote an essay saying I wanted to be a football player for Alabama. And then I wanted to graduate college and go be a football player for the Dallas Cowboys. Because my dad and mom, they are retired from Delta , my dad was a pilot, my mom was a flight attendant, and they flew out of Delta in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And so, that was a funny thing. And then also in that same essay, it was, I wanted to be a football player. I wanted to be a pastor because they only had to work on weekends. And I wanted to be a a pilot like my dad.
And so I just thought that was really funny how all that like came back later.
[00:02:55] James Hudnall: Yeah, no, that's a nice mix. And thinking back, I wanted to be a baseball player for the longest time growing up, and I maintain, I hate to brag about when you were young, I think I was a good little leaguer, but after that, things got, I guess, exponentially harder and I definitely wasn't dedicated enough to see that through, obviously.
When did you realize maybe that you couldn't play professional football or maybe you're still working on that in the background?
[00:03:16] Coleman Escue: when I was like 14 or 15 kind of everything just like flipped on its head. So I was like the sporty kid always outside. And then around that time, I kind of like just Stopped caring as much about sports and like really started to enjoy music and really started to like I'd started to do like theater and high school.
I did choir in high school. So I love like all the kind of creative performing arts things. That just took priority and I just started transitioning into it's not that I don't hate sports now by any means, but like, I just never care to watch them.
And I'm so far behind that in my mind, it's like, it'll be a lot to catch up. And like, yeah. So I've kind of just let that fall in the background and kind of just went to this more creative type thing. Music was like the forefront for a long time.
[00:04:15] James Hudnall: going back to that time in your life, if you remember, was it a, was it a, maybe an event or a couple of events that led to that transition or was it just kind of a gradual following and changing of interests?
[00:04:25] Coleman Escue: Yeah. Well around that time was when I really started to like, Get very plugged in into my church. And so I, I did what was called like an internship, like a student internship, which basically like at the beginning just looked like us being at the church often. And so we were probably at the church like 4 days a week.
That was fun for me and that became more all consuming. At that time even I was like. So young, I saw it more as like, I want to go hang out with my friends and it became more of a relational thing.
At the time I was wrestling for my high school. And I think I got so caught up in the relationships and the friendships that I wanted to prioritize that. And so, I remember even having a conversation with my mom, my mom was like, "Your grades are starting to drop because you're always at church. You wake up, you go to school, you go to practice, you leave practice, go to church. Like, you don't do your homework, you never have time, like, something needs to get cut, you have to pick which one."
And so, in that moment, I was like, alright, I'll cut wrestling out and I'll just like go full into church and hanging out with friends and stuff. And so that's kind of when I think like the, the transition happened where I spent so much time with people at church that everything else kind of died out sports wise.
[00:05:48] James Hudnall: Okay. And up until this point in your life, were you tinkering with computers? Did you ever fathom that you might one day be developing software?
[00:05:57] Coleman Escue: not in the slightest. So like, I've always been . A techie person in the sense of, it's very easy for me to pick up technology, but, like, I've never been deep into technology. I didn't even know it was possible for someone without a degree to, code or do any of these things. But I was always like the kid who would watch the movies and be like that's awesome Like I want to do that
But I mean really I was just a gamer that was that was the extent of my like Technology is just games and then like using your phone and computer
[00:06:28] James Hudnall: Okay. So what happens next? Do you go to ministry school and pursue that?
[00:06:31] Coleman Escue: So graduate high school straight out of high school. I go into ministry school which the ministry school I went to was a two year college. And there was like a certificate program where you just did like ministry classes through the school. And then there was an associates program that you could get at the same time through just like a third party college because at the time the ministry school wasn't accredited and so I ended up doing the associates degree program and so throughout that two year ministry school that was when I got my associates and That was my big all in on music. Okay. So my focus in ministry school was the worship music aspect and so I think it came out to about 60 hours a week. We were always on the go and Typically we were just like playing practicing writing songs doing all these different things And so like this is kind of the part of my life or just music took over
[00:07:30] James Hudnall: Okay. I'm really curious about this. I want to pull on that thread and I hope the audience will stick with me here. So I went to church, especially in my younger days. And we were, I guess we started off as Methodist and then we became Baptist. I'm curious what the denomination was that you were involved in because the musical aspect never seemed to be like a preeminent factor in any of the church that I went to.
[00:07:50] Coleman Escue: Yeah, so that's actually funny. I started out Methodist when I was a kid, too. And the church that I went to that was , the one where I really dove in, that was a non denominational church. it's, I guess more of the modern age of churches. I don't know whatever you want to call it.
But yeah, music was a big aspect at my church when I was there. And so, I played a lot of, guitar, piano, sing, never too deeply dug into, bass and electric, but that was kind of, like, the core things that I did while I was there.
[00:08:19] James Hudnall: Okay. And so was the end goal at this point to become a pastor or a different function within the church?
[00:08:24] Coleman Escue: Yeah, so my end goal was to become a worship pastor, which is basically someone who works at a church who just does all of the music aspects of things, which it is a lot deeper than that because And we can get more into this later, but I got a job after ministry school and I was over Three different teams.
So music wasn't my only job But that was like my focus throughout college.
[00:08:48] James Hudnall: Okay. And I was also going to ask in ministry school, I was going to ask about like public speaking. I don't know. I know the ministers that I observed growing up, you know, you had to be a good public speaker. You had to be comfortable with talking. I'm curious if you were maybe taught that in ministry school, but also given the fact that your focus was more on music.
Yeah. So how did they balance that?
[00:09:08] Coleman Escue: Yeah. So, one of our main classes was basically like a public speaking class. It was actually I think it was like an intro to preaching or something. And it was very intimidating at the time because every single day we had class, we had to come in with like a little 2 minute message that we prepared and we would have to stand up and present it.
And he would just like, Pick out three to five people randomly, and so you never knew when you were getting picked. So you always had to be prepared. And so I am more of an introvert. Actually, it is harder for me to talk to people. And I got a lot of those communication skills from ministry school and ministry as a whole.
And so talking. A lot in those classes and being on stage, even like I was just playing music. So it wasn't necessarily like I'm talking from a stage, but it's still like kind of the aspect of like being on a stage gets you. I feel like more comfortable with that that public speaking fear, I think, because I think people are really afraid of being vulnerable in front
[00:10:12] James Hudnall: Yeah.
[00:10:13] Coleman Escue: More so than they are the talking aspect of things. And so I think those two things really helped train me to have like better communication
skills, which have definitely helped longterm.
[00:10:26] James Hudnall: I thought, I thought that might be your answer. That's why I wanted to tease that question out because I have a feeling that that translates very well to your current job. So that's really cool that you, you learned that at that point. So yeah. How did this play out?
[00:10:38] Coleman Escue: So, ended up graduating ministry school after two years, and then there was a internship that you could do afterwards through the college where they basically put you at a church, either a part of like the church that you already are, or a church that they're like friends with. And it's an unpaid internship.
So you would just go and basically be a. unpaid staff member for this church and get experience. And so I ended up, I was in Birmingham, Alabama at the time throughout college, and I ended up moving to Huntsville, Alabama, which is almost like Tennessee. It's basically on the border of Alabama and Tennessee.
And I ended up staying there and working. Well, I was an intern at the church for 2 years and worked some jobs on the side. And that was where a lot of. My core friendships happened. That's where I met my now wife. And so I was there for two years and about August of 2019, I had been interviewing with different churches and felt like I found a church that I really liked the pastor and really liked kind of the culture of the church.
And so I decided to move to Louisville, Kentucky. And become the worship pastor at a smaller, just like a church that is just starting, like just off the ground. Don't always have a building. Don't always have like a bunch of funding and technology and stuff on their side, like a lot of other churches do.
[00:12:05] James Hudnall: I've got to ask because we love talking about interviews and I've never had a chance to ask about like a, a pastoral interview process. And I'm so curious, what was that like? And then like the juxtaposition between interviewing for that job and maybe given a glimpse into the future that versus like a tech interview,
like how how was that?
[00:12:23] Coleman Escue: It's fascinating. So the interview process for churches is very much like, who are you and what is your heart for people, ministry, church, music, whatever, like, whatever your thing is, like, what is your heart? What is your passion? Like, that is basically the entire interview, which is very translatable into technical interviews or really any job interview, in my opinion.
But I got really good at. Because I interviewed with actually a lot of churches, and I got really good at focusing on instead of like the fear of, Oh, my goodness, this is an interview. They're interviewing me. I got to be like, I'm interviewing this church because I don't want to move anywhere where I don't want to be with these people.
And so I got a lot of practice with. honestly forgetting that I'm in this interview and more so just focusing on asking these people questions
[00:13:15] James Hudnall: Yeah.
[00:13:15] Coleman Escue: like, "Who are you? What is your heart for your church? What is your heart for your city?" Like all these different ministry questions. I would start to be able to ask and kind of uncover their heart and passion for things and that really helped me in the future, one, be more comfortable in interviews, but two, like to know the focus is not me that it's a two way focus where, you want to be at this company, you have to figure out what this company is about, what their mission is, what their values are and like what they stand for.
And because once you're in that company, like you support that company, you like. Wear that company kind of like as a badge on your chest. So, that was a really cool, like transition from all of those interview processes from churches.
[00:14:03] James Hudnall: I haven't done that many technical interviews myself, and even the few that I did. That concept right there, that framework where it's a two way street and you're interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you, that's invaluable.
That's like the biggest hurdle that I personally felt. And those that I talk with is just becoming at ease with who you are and just being able to answer questions and again, treat it as a two way street. So I think that's so cool that you have that early exposure.
[00:14:27] Coleman Escue: Yeah. It was very cool.
[00:14:28] James Hudnall: So there was no LeetCode, I guess when interviewing for the different churches that
[00:14:33] Coleman Escue: No, that I had to either, most of the time it was I had to submit videos of me singing and playing. And so that is, in my opinion, just as scary. It's, it's easier because like you get to kind of, prepare and like nitpick what video you're sending. But typically interview processes were multiple levels and like you would end up going to that church and playing in front of them anyways.
And so there were those aspects of having to prove your skills.
[00:15:01] James Hudnall: Yeah.
Yeah. No that's cool.
[00:15:03] Coleman Escue: Just like technical interviews.
[00:15:04] James Hudnall: I think you said this is around 2019. So COVID is just around the corner and up until this point, tech, software engineering, that's still not even a blip on your radar.
[00:15:13] Coleman Escue: Not even a thought. Yeah.
So August, 2019 moved to Louisville was a , worship pastor at this church was there for, I think it was eight months until march of 2020 when COVID hit. And so I ended up moving back to Huntsville, Alabama. My family still lived in Birmingham, but I didn't want to like, go back home and get lazy.
And so I kind of just was like, I'm going to go like move in with a friend for a little bit and just like, get back on my feet of like getting a job and kind of just like rallying together, I guess. And so I moved back to Huntsville right when COVID hit everything shut down. I actually, I got a job at Chipotle and just started working just cause it was considered essential.
And so it was a way to make money to like, start to afford a place to live.
[00:16:11] James Hudnall: Yeah. So we might've skipped this. Did the church shut down or maybe, okay. Because of COVID.
[00:16:17] Coleman Escue: Yes. So ended up. After the church shut down I'm in Huntsville, and then
I know I need to pick up a job, and so I just, like, I actually Googled what jobs help pay for college, because I was trying to, like, kind of think of a plan of what to do, where to go and I really enjoyed Sports medicine.
I took a sports medicine class in high school, and I thought it was really fun. And I was like, maybe I can try something like physical therapy or chiropractics or something. So I was like, thinking long term of, like, how can I get someone to pay for my college? And so I just started working at Chipotle for a bit.
And then actually, throughout covid, I kind of went down that health care path for a while. And so. I applied to a physical therapy assistant school and thankfully ended up getting turned down for it. And this was another kind of moment of like, okay, what do I do? Got to regroup.
Where do I go from here? And so then I was like I'll look into the chiropractic's field and so, I ended up moving from Chipotle to work at a chiropractor I worked as a chiropractor's assistant and kind of just tried to learn as much as I could and figure out do I like this? Would I want to do this? And then after I was there for a couple months, I was like, this is really cool. This is really fun. It's a really relational business because, like, all you're doing is you're like, people come in, you talk to them, have, some good conversation, you adjust them, help fix whatever need they have, which is one thing that I really enjoyed is, like, people came in hurting and you got to help that.
And so this was a way to, like, be kind to people and help people where they're hurting. And so I was like, this is very cool. I would love to do this, looked into chiropractic schools. There are only, I think, 12 in the U. S.
I did not realize that. The closest one was in Atlanta, Georgia, which was a couple hours from where I lived, and I was dating my girlfriend, who is now my wife at the time.
And found out the schooling costs about $300,000 in loans. And so in that moment was kind of like, I don't know if I want to move away from my girlfriend. I don't know if I want to take on all of this debt. I only had an associate's degree so I would have had to finish a bachelor's and then go for the doctorate. Then after that you have to go into a practice as a newbie and I was just thinking through and just like I just don't know if this is worth The time and the risk that I guess it could take .
And a lot of the chiropractic work was very data entry. And so I was getting very good at just like doing it quickly. And so there was a lot of downtime where I was able to just like mess around on the computer. And I remember I pulled up the terminal.
[00:19:11] James Hudnall: Mm hmm.
[00:19:12] Coleman Escue: On just like a windows computer at the office and was just like Googling, like cool things that I can do in a terminal. And that led me to an app. I think it's called like grasshopper or something, an app on the phone where they teach you JavaScript. And then I did that for a while, but that's very like. Super low level. And I was like, I want more. And so I found FreeCodeCamp online. And so I just started like doing these beginner FreeCodeCamp, html, CSS, never heard of these things before. So it's really cool to like, start digging into this and like building out websites. They're awful websites, but stuff that I could like put onto a screen and like see and I was like it like really scratched the creative itch in my brain.
So I was like, this is awesome. I get to like, build something. And so about that time I was working at the chiropractor and I decided since I wasn't going to pursue chiropractic school that I would go get a job that had better hours because I was getting off at like 7 p. m. And so that didn't leave me much time to, like, do anything with the rest of my day.
And so I was like, I want to get a job that has better hours and pays a little more. And so I became an electrician
[00:20:26] James Hudnall: Wow.
[00:20:26] Coleman Escue: Was an electrician for a couple months, and that was a great job because I was able to go into work at 6 a. m. and leave by 1 p. m. And so I was able to do all of this, like, whole work day at the beginning of my day, and then I could come home and I could eat lunch, like, watch TV for an hour, and then I would just go and code for, like, 3 to 4 hours a day. That kind of became a cycle for... Probably three months.
I was watching all these YouTube videos. They all hype you up saying like You can go from zero to a job in three months and anyone can do this You don't have to have a degree all this stuff and I was just like I can do this So I started after that couple months.
I started just like applying to jobs and I got nowhere.
[00:21:13] James Hudnall: Yeah. Well, hold on. Hold on a little bit. We gotta back up. You, you just said in passing that you decided to go become an electrician for a couple of months. So I worked with electricity when I was managing the boats and I There's more nuance to that. And even if it only speaks to your, learning acumen, I want to pull on that thread as well.
What do you mean by you went and became an electrician for a couple of months? Were you a helper? Did you have like an electrical background coming in? I would think you'd have to study for that as opposed to studying coding on the side just to even get that.
[00:21:42] Coleman Escue: yeah. So, I guess you could say I started as like an electrician apprentice. So my friend was already working as an electrician at the time and he was able to get me a job at the company he worked with. And so I just kind of started with this crew of three other people and they just started training me.
I had no background in electricity. I knew there was a hot and a neutral and a ground, but like, I didn't know what any of that meant. I just knew those were a thing. And so just going into it, I I was just like put with this crew of three people, two guys and one of the guys' daughters.
We did what are called rough ins on houses so it was residential electrician. So it's basically like when there's only the frame of the house, no wall, no drywall, no roof and you basically run the wire throughout the house.
And so that was where I started and I did that for six months and they just taught me like how to drill holes how to run wire How to put on boxes strip cables like all this different stuff.
And so I kind of just went with the flow and figured it out as I went and so I did that and then I got moved to another crew after that, where it wasn't rough-ins anymore. It was trims and so we went in and that's after they put on the drywall and after they've done everything. So basically that's where we put in the light switches and the appliances and like, we would. Go and then, connect these things to the wiring yeah, to the power. And so yeah, I did that for another, I think it was another six months.
[00:23:21] James Hudnall: And this is AC current you're dealing with, not DC, and is it all 120 volt? Was any of it 240?
[00:23:26] Coleman Escue: I think it was all 120. There was some 240 like in with dryer cables and, and different stuff like that. There was, especially when it came to the appliances, there were a lot more high voltage
[00:23:39] James Hudnall: Did you have any, any shocking lessons that you care to share? Clearly you made it either
[00:23:44] Coleman Escue: did. Yeah, no, I I never had an issue with it.
Thankfully. When we were doing rough ends, there was no power connection. And so there was really no worry. It was when we did trims. That was really like that where you had to be careful.
But I never, I never got shocked.
[00:23:59] James Hudnall: Yeah. Well, good. Now up to this point, Coleman, you, you've got a, an incredible resume, even if it doesn't seem targeted to a specific industry like programming, you've been a pastor, you've been involved with the church. You've got the. physician's assistant. I don't know if you get credit for that officially, but you at least scratch that itch for a minute.
Then you went to the chiropractic and now you're working as a, an electrician apprentice going down that line, you're also studying code. So I'm curious in all of these disjoint pursuits, did you formalize maybe a framework for learning new things that maybe helped you when you eventually moved on to code as well?
[00:24:36] Coleman Escue: Yeah. I think music And the art of playing music, learning music, figuring out how to play instruments. I think you learn how to learn, or at least that's what I feel like I, I did. And so when I was a kid, like I spent. Probably like four to five hours a day sitting in my room, like trying to learn guitar, trying to learn new songs, trying to learn new chords, different ways to play chords, like all these different things. And so I spent hours as a, as a like teenager trying to like tinker and figure things out and like learn.
And I think that's developed a skill within me that I've kind of carried on throughout m y journey. also like I love chess. I love playing chess. I love like doing rubik's cubes like with pattern recognition There's a grind whether it's chess or Rubik's cubes or music or whatever you're doing, like, there's a grind where there you have to sit down and just like dedicate time to something.
And I think that taught me how to learn. So, as I went through these different jobs I was able to just pick stuff up. I would go through this training period where I could just , pick it up and then It became rote memory especially with electrician, it was kind of a lot of muscle memory.
And so, yeah, as I just went from these different jobs, I just picked up these random little skills that I think all kind of culminate into
[00:26:02] James Hudnall: package. Yeah. Yeah, the package that you are and moving into it. I totally agree. I had a The similar disjoint, you know, different steps along the way, but like you, you know, an amalgam of different jobs along the way to pick up those skills that you never think would translate, but ultimately they do, even if it's just for conversations like this or that you'll have with colleagues in the workplace.
So no, that's so amazing. The trajectory you've had to this point in your story. So back to this point in your story, you're the electrician by day. You're studying programming by night, you're drinking the Kool Aid. Maybe you see you can go from zero to hero in three months. So you're, you're fired up, which is half the battle, I still believe, but you're not hearing anything back.
So What do you do next?
[00:26:41] Coleman Escue: Yeah. So, at this point I was still dating my girlfriend who's my now wife. And just trying to learn and apply to jobs. And like I said, I got, I might've gotten like 10 responses and I probably applied to like 100 jobs. Just like sitting on LinkedIn, just like at that point I was spamming the quick apply or the easy apply.
[00:27:03] James Hudnall: That's still not bad though. 10 percent response rate. That's not horrible.
[00:27:06] Coleman Escue: Yeah, and all of them were saying no. And so I, started going for , the head of the snake and started just stalking companies on LinkedIn and like finding a person who seemed important that I could talk to and put a bug in their ear. And consistently what I got back is like, "Hey, I love your heart. You're too green. You're too, new." that was consistent feedback that I got. And so I was like, okay I will try and figure something else out. And so, around this time, I ended up getting married to my wife and found this boot camp.
That is called Per Scholas and I was very dead set on not spending money. Like, I'm either going to find a free boot camp or I'm going to self teach until I get a job. So I found Per Scholas online and they are a free boot camp, but they did not have a location in Alabama where me and my now wife lived and they had a location in Cincinnati, Ohio. Which a bunch of my friends that I went to ministry school with, they straight out of ministry school, moved to Cincinnati and helped a a guy who's a pastor plant a church there. And so like 40 of my friends from college lived in Cincinnati and I was just like, all right, like, babe, hear me out.
What if we moved to Cincinnati? And we had been married for a month at this point. I was like, what if we moved to Cincinnati? I will do boot camp, which is full time. It was, it's a 15 week boot camp. And it was full stack JavaScript. And so it was like, I was not going to be able to work a job. I was like, maybe at nights I could do some door dash or something, but like, this was like a full on commitment.
And so I was like, okay, what if we moved to Cincinnati? What if I do this? And it'll probably fill in the gaps of like what I've struggled on learning and then it'll give me kind of a structured way of learning and then it'll give me a community that's going to help me get a job.
And my wife, my amazing wife was like, sure, let's go for it. And so we went and we visited Cincinnati one time. It was over the 4th of July and a month later. I think to the day we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio.
And yeah, so we were, we, I think we were married at 2 months at the point where we moved to Cincinnati and I started bootcamp, I think, like, 3 weeks later.
[00:29:37] James Hudnall: Okay. And just for clarity, at this point, it sounds like programming is a passion. This isn't just you chasing a well paying job. Is that
[00:29:45] Coleman Escue: Yes. Yeah. The,
[00:29:47] James Hudnall: set on this?
[00:29:48] Coleman Escue: I watched all the videos where they were like you can make a hundred grand easy doing programming, but I was more so like "Programming is fun." I'm enjoying creating things and yeah, the money's great everyone likes the money that comes along with it, but really I was more so in this because I was trying to find something that I really wanted to do. I didn't want to keep working side jobs. And so, I guess you can say I got bit by the programming bug.
[00:30:14] James Hudnall: Yeah. Yeah. No, you, you did.
[00:30:16] Coleman Escue: Just finding out a way to do this full time.
[00:30:18] James Hudnall: Yeah. No, that's amazing. So maybe if you want to briefly summarize your time at Per Scholas. I hadn't heard about them until I was introduced to you. How was the program free? What did you think about the program? How did it prepare you, I guess, based on what you know now having landed the job?
[00:30:33] Coleman Escue: So, I'm no expert, but from what I understand, they are a nonprofit organization where they help put people into tech. Not only software, like, it's not just a software engineering boot camp. It's a, I believe there's like an I. T. boot camp as well with it. And so their kind of goal is to take people who. I guess are more like low income or more struggling or finding a job they help kind of train them up for free so that they can put them in the tech field. And so that's kind of where the whole nonprofit aspect comes from. And I believe companies in the Per Scholas areas where there are locations, I believe they donate to Per Scholas and that's kind of how they make their money.
And then trains up graduates and places them at different companies. And so when I was looking, I was just like, "It's free. Let me apply."
So I applied ended up getting in. And so the first, I think it was four, maybe five weeks. It was just like fundamentals. We went over HTML, we went over CSS, we went over JavaScript kind of going through all the different like data types you would need to know.
And then we went through a couple of weeks learning. Back end technologies. And so we did MongoDB Express and Node. And so we went through and just learned how to make a CRUD app. And, like, just build these pretty much back end only. They provided a little bit of CSS for us. And then we just, like, focused on how to build back end.
And so after... That first bit of learning just foundational JavaScript, we did our first, like, capstone where we built a game. And so I ended up building a Bloons Tower Defense, like, kind of remake game. It was very fun, but a lot more difficult than I expected.
And then the second Little chunk of bootcamp was back end, and then we built a back end capstone and then our third chunk we learned React. And so we spent a couple of days learning react, but really we dove into putting react into a full stack app. after that, we built our largest capstone, which is like our full stack app.
Which I ended up building a Pinterest clone. And so all of this was about 15 weeks, probably about eight hours a day. It was very fun for me. There were a bunch of people who you could tell we're getting overwhelmed. I never felt like I was getting overwhelmed by anything. I think honestly, the teachers did a great job of walking alongside you, there was , tons of different after hours, times where you could go and ask questions. And then there were also professional development classes where they helped you build a LinkedIn, build a resume and all of these different things. And so I feel like they gave you the complete package.
But the tech training was the focus. And so now, being where I am in hindsight, I think, honestly, for me, at least, the tech training was great. I think they filled in all the gaps that I missed. I think I learned both front end, like, I learned React and Node really well. I think we, we only went over for like a week a piece, but they did a great job of just like teaching you the fundamentals and then showing you how it works inside of an app.
And so I think looking back now, I think the program was really great. I will say it was pretty rigorous and we did have some people end up dropping out throughout the process. But I mean, I believe we graduated with 26 people in the class. So there was a good bit of people who ended up graduating.
I don't think because it was a free program that it was a lesser experience than other boot camps.
[00:34:23] James Hudnall: Right, that makes
[00:34:24] Coleman Escue: Um,
[00:34:24] James Hudnall: So they armed you with the technical know how so you would check that box Maybe now, do you want to summarize the job hunt thereafter? And I've got a little bit of inside knowledge because I do remember a couple of the conversations we had where it seemed like we don't have to name the company unless you'd like to, you had your heart set with a certain company.
And in my mind, you were doing everything right. You were attending local meetups. You were interacting with the people that work there. And it's just like we, for whatever reason, we could not get this company to budge, to give you that opening. So I'm curious, do you want to maybe summarize?
Either that experience or maybe your overall experience with that, I guess, job hunt, because there's so many people out there listening, probably now that are in that same boat where maybe they've done the bootcamp, maybe they're in the bootcamp, but they can't land that job just because of how tough things are right now.
[00:35:10] Coleman Escue: Yeah. So I ended up graduating bootcamp in January of this year, 2023. And I didn't get my job until four months later, I believe. So it was a long four months of focusing really hard on job hunting. And yeah, you went with me through a lot of the process. So you got to see a lot of the ups and downs.
There were a bunch of different companies that I was like, this would be great to work here. But there was like 1 company that I really had my heart set on kind of like you were just talking about. And so, in Cincinnati, I started attending all these different meetups started getting to know people.
There was one company where they had a meet up every single week where they had a barista come to their office and they would just make coffee and you could just go to their office Friday morning and just like sit and drink coffee with a bunch of people. And so all these different meetups and times were really great way for me to kind of get plugged into the tech community in Cincinnati. And so my heart was set on like, we're staying in Cincinnati. I'm not looking for anything unless it's Cincinnati or remote. And I was like, I love JavaScript, so I'm only looking for JavaScript. And for the first, two months, I was going strong with that ideal of only wanting to be in Cincinnati with JavaScript and I just kept getting turned away.
So Cincinnati is a very Java heavy city. I would do all of these tech meetups. I would reach out to all of these recruiters or hiring managers and they were all super kind and they would all just be like, "Hey, we love the enthusiasm, but you don't have Java knowledge. And we can't go through the interview process with you. So we're just going to cut it here."
I kept getting these first round interviews, but I could never get past that first round. And so that stayed consistent throughout the entire, probably three and a half months. I was able to get a first round interview at probably, eight companies where I got through the first round through a lot of networking But just got turned down because I didn't have the right tech.
[00:37:12] James Hudnall: Let me, can I, can I pause you for a second? I want to pretend that I'm the audience listening to that and I would wonder, do you feel like you had more success even for those initial rounds having gone through the bootcamp and having more of the technical know how, do you feel like that helped you in hindsight at least get the interviews, even if they weren't successful?
[00:37:29] Coleman Escue: Oh, that's a very good question. I think...yes to a point. I think having the bootcamp is probably similar to a degree where it's like you have some sort of a stamp of approval saying like this person has at least done something. So I think that helped in a sense, but realistically, I think a lot of what got me to those interviews was networking and a lot of reaching out and bugging people.
[00:37:59] James Hudnall: Yeah.
[00:37:59] Coleman Escue: consistently reaching out to different recruiters, finding, new people in Cincinnati, connecting with them, meeting people at tech meetups, getting connections from people at tech meetups, just, consistently meeting people and getting connections
[00:38:12] James Hudnall: Yeah.
[00:38:12] Coleman Escue: forth.
[00:38:12] James Hudnall: That's a recurring theme with many of the conversations that I have, Coleman. And I hope the listeners are picking up on that. And what I love about that is that as an active process, that's not you just firing off applications on LinkedIn easy apply and hoping that things go well.
That's you taking ownership and actually going to these meetups and reaching out to people. So I love that that was successful and I highly encourage anybody out there listening to, Do that, add that to your repertoire if you're not already doing that. So, all right, let's maybe go back to where you were in the story.
So you were getting the interviews, but they weren't panning out because you didn't know Java. So what did you do about that?
[00:38:45] Coleman Escue: So, at this point, I was wrestling with the fact of, do I... Start learning Java and start scratch on a new technology? Or do I just keep going hard in JavaScript and kind of master JavaScript, or break off to a new tech? And Everything within me was like I'll just master JavaScript.
And so I just like stayed strong on that track and around that time I just started thinking, what if I did apply somewhere outside of Cincinnati? And just like see what happens? And so I applied just kind of not as a joke, but it was more so like, this will never happen. I'm just going to apply to this company.
And so I applied to a company in Birmingham where my family lives. And I was just like, it's probably not going to happen, but like, if it does, my family lives there, we could figure it out. So I applied there and then I actually did mock interviews through Per Scholas and ended up doing a 30 minute mock interview with a man named Alan.
He's a great guy. We did the 30 minute mock interview, but he loved talking to me, so he ended up spending another hour and a half afterwards, just like talking to me, giving me advice, getting to know me. And so kind of after that conversation, he was kind of set as like a mentor. And so we kept communication throughout this couple months and he lives in a different city as well in Ohio. So he was like, "Hey there was a guy who works for this company called CGI. He just came down and spoke at the meetups here in Dayton," which is another city in Ohio. And he was like "They were talking about how they have a lot of job openings. So I just went ahead and kind of like wingman'd you and talked you up." And he said that he would love for you to like, reach out on LinkedIn and then apply."
So, I ended up reaching out and just being like, "Hey, thanks so much. Looking forward to it." And went ahead and applied. And that company is in Columbus, which is more central Ohio.
And so again, this thought of like, I want to be in Cincinnati, but like, this is a good opportunity, so I'll just go for it, ended up going through five interviews for that job and for Birmingham as well. I can just go quickly through the interviews.
The 1st one was like a recruiter screen. So they just called me got to know me. 2nd one was kind of more of a behavioral get to know you interview. The 3rd one was another behavioral interview. And then the 4th and 5th were two back to back interviews. And so the first of the back to back was a technical interview, but not in the sense of everyone thinks of it.
They literally took my resume and went through my technologies and made me explain every single technology. So they were like, Oh, it says here you have MongoDB. What is MongoDB and how have you used it?
And so I had to just go through every single technology and list out, like, this is what react is. It's like JavaScript framework.
And I built this project with it and talked about it. So that was very intimidating interview. But after that, it was another behavioral interview, but it was more like less about me and more abstract questions. Like, "You have a team that you're leading and you need for people. Who would you pick?"
"What qualities would you pick out of people to be on your team?" Stuff like that. More abstract questions. And so those were like all of my interviews for CGI. And so I went through all of that interview process was kind of unsure of how this was going, just kind of doing the interview, not really hearing feedback, but just like sending up an email afterwards saying, Hey, thanks so much. Great interview. I'm looking forward to the next one. Something like that.
[00:42:25] James Hudnall: I want to highlight that before you go on that, that costs almost nothing. And that is that, yeah, everybody do that. Always send a follow up. Thank you. So please continue.
[00:42:35] Coleman Escue: yeah. And so I would just send those emails and like most of the time didn't hear back sometimes it was like, Glad it went well like some like one sentence and so never really got feedback on how it was going, just got another email saying, "okay, we'd like to schedule this interview. Okay. We'd like to schedule this interview."
And so I was just going through the process kind of just blindly, I feel like. And so after five interviews with CGI, I ended up getting the offer and that was an amazing day. But I ended up getting the offer and was also in the interview process with the company in Birmingham that I also really liked and I got the offer for CGI and they said like, here's the offer.
We need a verbal acceptance and then we'll need a written acceptance in.... so this was a Friday when I got the call and it was a memorial day, I believe, and they needed it on Tuesday.
[00:43:29] James Hudnall: So they wanted the verbal, like right there on the telephone and then that's interest- I haven't heard that before.
[00:43:35] Coleman Escue: And so I really only had a couple of days to, like, figure out, is this what I'm doing? And so I went ahead and gave the verbal acceptance. And then We went on Memorial Day to Birmingham and looked at different apartments and just tried to, like, figure out if I take this Birmingham job, where would I want to live? All this stuff. And when we left, we just didn't have like a peace with it. It just like felt "off." And so when we came back to Cincinnati, we were like, okay, well, we'll just go to Columbus and like, see what we think and look at different apartments. Cause I've verbally accepted, I need a place to live.
So, my wife and I drove to Columbus and we kind of just fell in love with the city and we were just like, okay. Let's just, pull the trigger. Let's give the written "yes" to CGI and we'll go ahead and find a place in Columbus. And so that was kind of the transition into actually getting the job.
[00:44:33] James Hudnall: So now you are a real live software developer Coleman, and I want to ask you, has that feeling set in?
[00:44:39] Coleman Escue: Not at all, actually. It hits me every single day when I wake up is like, Oh, I get to go to work today. I still feel like I'm in a bootcamp where it's real, but you're not getting paid for it or like it just doesn't feel like super real yet I still have that feeling and it's kind of surreal every day when I get on stand up like - i'm doing this.
[00:44:59] James Hudnall: Yeah, no, it's amazing when you zoom out and if it makes you feel better, you know, I've been at LinkedIn, I think going on 15, 16 months now, it still feels surreal to me. Like there's been very few times where, you know, you run into someone that are like, Oh, what do you do? And I'm like, wow, I can actually say I'm a software developer now.
So it's, it's, it's amazing, man. I don't know. I still feel like I'm in the honeymoon phase and I can tell that you are as well. So that's so cool.
Before you get out of here, I know we're coming up on our hour. I wanted to ask you, do you have a typical day in the life of as a software developer at CGI?
[00:45:29] Coleman Escue: Yeah so , the first two months of CGI was training. So that was one thing I really loved about CGI is they're big on wanting to train us and build us up. Cause my stack is in C#. And so we're doing angular front end C sharp back end. So it's very different.
So the first four weeks we did this It was kind of like a soft skills training and like professional development training Where we kind of just like made a cgi resume and different stuff because this is a consultancy company So you work for clients that cgi partners with? And so we worked on like the soft skills for the first few weeks and then the next five weeks we did like tech training so they taught us C#, they taught us angular, they taught us typescript. They taught us like Azure and different kind of like architecture. And so to round all that out, we had to do a project that was just like a quick timesheet project using the stack and we presented it to the VPs of our business unit. And so, I finished that a couple of weeks ago and thankfully some people that I went through the training program with they did not get picked for a client like immediately.
They're still on what's called the bench where they're like, trying to skill up and learn new technologies while they're waiting for a client...
[00:46:51] James Hudnall: okay.
[00:46:51] Coleman Escue: ... to kind of reach out and thankfully, I got picked to go on a client. Pretty much right away. And so, I've been at a client now working for about I think 3 weeks now and was able to submit, like, my 1st pull request this week and, actually be in the code base. And it's been incredible. So, kind of the day in the life now is just wake up, do a morning stand up, then either shadow or work on some tasks on the sprint board.
Then after lunch, we kind of have another meeting that's just go through any blockers. If you have any that's normally a pretty quick meeting and then back to working on any tasks or finishing anything up. And yeah, that's kind of what a day in the life looks like. A lot of coding, a lot of meetings, a lot more meetings than I expected.
[00:47:42] James Hudnall: Yeah. No, you definitely can't get away from the meetings. That's, that's the, yeah, I'll take it though. Yeah. Everything else equal. We get to do what we love. So yeah, man, before you get out of here, if you have a minute, I would love to throw you on the hot seat to, to better understand your psychology.
If you're up for it. All right. First question. What does your typical morning routine look like?
[00:48:00] Coleman Escue: So lately I've been kind of undisciplined. Ideally my morning routine is to wake up have quiet time, In the morning, just me for a while. And then I have been running lately and so going on runs going on a run and then shower before work. So that's like my ideal routine. Recently, it's just been: wake up last minute. Maybe at a run in before and then hop on. So.
[00:48:24] James Hudnall: All right. Cool. If money didn't exist, what do you think you would do every day with your time?
[00:48:28] Coleman Escue: Ooh, I would probably try and start some sort of business that combines all of my passions to where I could combine coding and music and ministry and put them all together in a business. I don't know what that business would be. That's probably something I should dream about.
But yeah, if I had all the money in the world and could make a business risk free, that's probably what I would do.
[00:48:53] James Hudnall: Maybe a good side project for a weekend or something down the line. If you could send a single message to your former self to help you during these transitions that you've done, what do you think that message would be?
[00:49:03] Coleman Escue: I would say be open to doing something that you don't necessarily want to do. So, like, I did not want to do C Sharp. I actually remember saying, I will not code in C Sharp. And so just like, being open, I would tell myself, be open to moving and be open to learning something new.
[00:49:23] James Hudnall: I like it. Are there any books or podcasts that have had a big impact on you, technical or otherwise?
[00:49:28] Coleman Escue: So, recently I've been listening to the Waveform podcast by Marques Brownlee. He's a tech YouTuber. That's a very interesting podcast for tech stuff. It does cover some software, but it also covers a lot of hardware, so that's really cool. And then a book that's changed me. Probably like, How to Win Friends and Influence People, or there's another one called A Tale of Three Kings by Jean Edwards.
That's a really good book. That's more of a, a ministry book. Has more like Bible stories inside of that. But yeah, that's, that's one of my favorites.
[00:50:05] James Hudnall: Cool. I guess as a closing question, is there any advice that you would have to people out there listening that are maybe. Or were maybe in your shoes from a few months ago where they were still trying to land that job. Any words of encouragement that we haven't already talked about?
[00:50:20] Coleman Escue: Yeah I would say don't quit. There's a lot of people in my bootcamp that I'm really good friends with still and talk to often. And the job hunt right now is really tough. It's very grueling. It's very difficult to get a bunch of no's. It's very difficult to feel like you're like running into a brick wall.
But if you don't quit, you win. You get there eventually. If you put consistent effort. It's kind of like, I heard this metaphor of chopping down a tree. If you swing an axe at a tree five times every single day, eventually the tree's gonna fall. So, I would say, I know it's tough. Trust me, I know it is tough. But, Just don't quit. Keep going. Keep reaching out. If you need to take breaks, please do. Keep your mental health, your physical health in check. But if this is a dream that you have in your heart, go for it. And don't let burnout or exhaustion or frustration stop you.
[00:51:18] James Hudnall: Yeah. I love that. Coleman, where can people go to find out more about you or maybe connect with you?
[00:51:22] Coleman Escue: Yeah. I mean, for me, really, just LinkedIn.
[00:51:25] James Hudnall: Okay, I'll add your profile in the show notes and man, I just want to thank you for, for coming on and I actually did look back while we were talking. I have the recording that we did. I think the initial one was back on December 2nd. So I may go through and listen to that just for again, that comparison before and after.
And I just want to commend you on this transition that you have successfully executed. I thank you so much for coming on and sharing it today. And I'd love to, in the future, maybe bring you back on and talk about from right now, going forward to how things have progressed. So thank you so much for, for coming on and sharing your story.
[00:51:57] Coleman Escue: Yeah, thank you for inviting me. Thank you for walking through my journey with me. I just want all the listeners to know that James is the real deal. he walked through a lot of my journey with me. I was able to reach out to him on LinkedIn, ask him questions, ask him advice.
And he was always there to answer. He was always there to help. And so that's one reason I just love this podcast. And yeah, again, just thank you so much for inviting me on. I'm just honored to be invited and get to share my story.